Beat The Chef

If you're over the domestic goddess and the naked chef or need an idea for dinner tonight, then Beat the Chef, ABC TV's new food and cooking contest, should have just the right ingredients for you. This half-hour of culinary mayhem, Beat the Chef, screens Wednesday nights at 6.30pm.

With equal amounts of fact and fun, Beat the Chef will send you leaping back into the kitchen - or at least thinking about it from the safety of the couch!

A fashionably retro kitchen set is the scene for a confrontation between a pair of amateur cooks, a professional chef, a pair of live wire hosts, a concealed 'must use' ingredient and a ticking clock.

Each program features a pair of challengers, at least one of whom is a capable cook, who are determined to prepare a better meal than a talented professional chef. With one central ingredient revealed to the team, around which a dish must be conceived, the competitors raid the fridge and a well-stocked pantry to conjure up a meal in moments. Twenty-five minutes and your time's up!

Then it's down to the tentative taste buds of our hosts Mark and Jodie to sample the delights of the Beat the Chef kitchens. Dinner for two or just a quick feed - it's all a question of time and talent as to what gets dished up.

Using fresh and seasonal ingredients, the programs will be able to cover many of Australia's regional specialities. With a variety of challengers and chefs mixed with a range of food styles Beat the Chef makes for a great tasting plate of rich multicultural heritage, which is Australia's contemporary cuisine. (Source: ABC)